Milan’s Supermarket of the Future is Worth a Look

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Milan’s Supermarket of the Future is Worth a Look

01/03/2017

It's a store within a store and housed in the latest store of Coop Italia, the country’s largest grocery chain. The 10,800-square-foot shop holds some 6,000 products, which are all organized on interactive tables and shelves. When a customer moves to grab a specific product, relevant information such as nutritional value, presence of allergens and waste disposal instructions are displayed on sleek screens suspended above as “augmented labels.”

Imagine this: according to curbed.com, a wall of more than 50 monitors form a gigantic screen for displaying information, all aimed at promoting more conscious and sustainable consumption.

Shoppers can easily check out top-selling products, and even recommendations for recipes and cooking suggestions. Carlo Ratti, designer; MIT professor; author of the book "The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life"; and one of the drivers behind the store, says that “In the near future, we will be able to discover everything there is to know about the apple we are looking at: the tree it grew on, the CO2 it produced, the chemical treatments it received, and its journey to the supermarket shelf.”

It’s a store worth taking the trip to see the future of the U.S. supermarket.